It is, of course, a very similar situation today. The forces ripping up our old social model are too powerful to beat. That is not because the rich bankers or global multinationals are engaged in a conscious conspiracy of rip-offs and oppression (though, frankly speaking, big business does sometimes engage in exactly that). It is because the forces ripping up the social model are deeply implanted in the nature of the economic system — and that system is a reflection of the propensities in human nature which we cannot and perhaps should not overcome.

I realize I’m supposed to bow to the fact that Mead has a whole shelf of books under his name.

But, as a glance at Liberal Fascism or a gander at Bill Whittle reveal, the pendulum did not merely swing from Locke to Rousseau according to some Newtonian fancy: there has been a deliberate, sometimes benign, more often malevolent attack on Rationalism and American Exceptionalism underway for a few score years now.

It will thus be interesting if Mead just offers a bunch of ‘as with the weather, things changed‘ navel gazing, or has the courage to step up, admit we’ve been rooked, and raise a call to serious consideration. Panic isn’t helpful, but neither is the 22,236 mile view.

It’s cause and effect. We’re feeling the effects, and we know what’s the cause. But after a while, usually by the time its too late to reverse the damage, things do tend to take on a life of their own. You know, like the Dark Ages.

Your orbit analogy is perfect: Mead is trying to be a “big picture” guy, but when you get back far enough to get that whole big picture, you can’t see any detail at all. From orbit, nothing appears to have changed since Moses that he could see, except perhaps the Great Wall of China.

[…] == "undefined"){ addthis_share = [];}by SmittyLiberalism is far out, man.Part two of Mead’s geosynchronous review of the Progressive cratering is up. Read the whole series, if you’ve time:Right now the right has something of a monopoly […]